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Joscelin kneed his Akkadian mount forward, a long-legged black gelding with three white socks. His sword-hilt protruded from beneath the collar of his sheepskin coat and his gaze was as cold and blue as a Drujani winter sky. “Will he see me?”
The Skotophagotis merely looked at him, calm astride his ass, his shadow thrown before him, foreshortened and deadly on the old royal road, its fireclay bricks crumbling for lack of repair. “Yes,” he said presently. “The Mahrkagir will see you.”
We rode behind him into the city of Daršanga.
There was more life in the city than we had seen in the countryside and villages ... more life, and more fear. How not, when we rode in company with an Eater-of-Darkness? People hurried to the sides of the streets as we passed, prostrating themselves before the priest, pressing their brows to the earth. The Skotophagotis took no notice.
Although there seemed no marketplace and no shops, there was trade of a sort, furtive and joyless; foodstuffs, mostly, a good deal of fish, and bread and oil. A man pushing a two-wheeled cart sold tallow candles; another, needles and skeins of thread. A cobbler sat on a wooden stool, measuring a Drujani soldier’s foot for a boot. The soldier did not kneel, but bowed low as we passed.
Here and there, I could hear the sound of smithies at work, the ringing clangor of hammer and anvil, and the acrid scent of heated steel in the air. Daršanga might be poor and hungry, but it was able to feed its forges. It had the odor of war.
At the heart of the city, we passed a low plaza that might have been gracious, once. It had columns set at the four corners, but these had been toppled and shattered. In the center a marble-rimmed well was set nearly flush to the paving. A dome had stood over it, a hollow structure with three arched doorways. Now great chunks of debris filled the well and only the truncated foundation remained.
“It was a fire-temple,” Tizrav said in a low voice.
Three elderly men crouched beside a scarred marble bench at the outermost verge of the plaza, clad in robes the indeterminate color of filth. Long, unkempt beards grew nearly to their waists, and the smell was fearful. I did not see, at first, the shackles that bound them; not until the Skotophagotis stopped before them, pointing with his staff. Then they moved, stiffly, going to their knees, and I saw the shackles at their ankles and the long chain leading to a mighty bolt sunk deep into the flagstones. All three made the prostration. The Skotophagotis nodded once and lowered his staff, riding onward.
“Who are they?” I asked Tizrav.
“They were Magi.” His face behind the eyepatch was impassive. “Priests of the Lord of Light. Now they are beggars. It pleases the Mahrkagir to let them live and breed fear.”
I looked behind me once as we left, twisting in the saddle. The Magi were huddled once more. They had made a den beneath the marble bench, blocking the wind with hunks of rubble and scraps of hide and blankets. At the furthest reach of their chain was the midden-heap, stinking of ordure. I wondered at their tenacity in clinging to life, for the conditions seemed unbearable. Men will embrace anything to live , the Drujani scout had said. Mayhap it was true.
And then we reached the palace.
It had been a pleasant structure in former days, charming and well-protected, seated on an outcropping of rock that overlooked the Sea of Khaspar. There had been a time, Tizrav had told me, when the Great Kings of Persis would use it as a summer palace, hosted by the Princes of Drujan, and they would hunt the length of the peninsula and ride hawking in the mountains. The windows stood open to catch the cooling breezes. The inner roofs had been tiled in blue and banners had flown from the towers.
Now the roofs were black with tar-pitch and the towers were barren, every window was barred and shuttered and the high walls bristling with battlements. The palace of Daršanga waited, weathered-grey and grim. I thought about the Akkadian chronicle I had read and how blood had run in channels down its halls. My mouth was dry with fear.
A squadron of Drujani soldiers met us in the front courtyard, armed to the teeth and clad in armor of boiled leather and steel plate, none uniform, all serviceable. They bowed to the Skotophagotis , making a corridor to allow us passage. The Skotophagotis dismounted, and we followed suit. Someone put a rope around the neck of the priest’s ass,
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